Classic Films in Focus: BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1955)

There's more than one bad day being referenced in the title, but Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) mostly focuses on the deadly 24 hours spent by Spencer Tracy's war veteran protagonist in a dusty little town that definitely doesn't want him there. It's a searing and sadly still relevant indictment of prejudice, small town corruption, and the way cowardice prevents ostensibly good people from doing what they know to be right. John Sturges, known for his Westerns and war films, directs this taut noir in a modern Western setting, and Tracy leads a cast of outstanding performers, with Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Walter Brennan, Dean Jagger, Lee Marvin, and Anne Francis all doing excellent work. 

Tracy plays WWII veteran John Macreedy, who lost an arm in Italy and arrives in Black Rock to present a medal to the father of the Japanese-American soldier who died saving his life. Denizens of the town are immediately suspicious of Macreedy, and their mood sours to outright hostility when they learn why he has come, with local boss Reno Smith (Robert Ryan) encouraging his henchmen, Coley (Ernest Borgnine) and Hector (Lee Marvin), to bait Macreedy at every turn. Macreedy soon realizes that Smith and his lackeys are behind the mysterious disappearance of the Japanese farmer, Komoko, but they don't intend to let Macreedy live long enough to tell the state police about their crimes.

Each character in this story represents a possible response to injustice, with Tracy's disabled veteran as our moral example and Ryan's seething racist at the other extreme. Macreedy, wanting to honor the memory of his fallen comrade and perhaps assuage his survivor's guilt, never wavers in his commitment to seeing justice done, even though it could mean his own death. He isn't temperamental or easy to bully into foolish action, which makes him particularly dangerous to the volatile, tyrannical Smith, who recognizes him as the inexorable force of justice personified. Smith puts on a friendly face at first, but it's merely a calculating facade. His need to rule over his neighbors and his vicious hatred of Japanese people soon become obvious. Coley and Hector eagerly abet Smith's reign, if only because it gives them scope to exercise their own sadistic natures and probably line their pockets at the same time. Young Pete (John Ericson) and his sister, Liz (Anne Francis), both express ambivalence at first, but each of them must eventually choose a side, and their starkly different decisions determine their fates. Good intentions and cowardice mark the characters of Doc Velie (Walter Brennan) and Sheriff Tim Horn (Dean Jagger), older men who don't condone Smith's crimes but seem unable to stand up to him until Macreedy shows them how it's done. It's worthwhile to note that Liz is the only female character we see in the entire town until the very last scene, as if Black Rock women have to stay in hiding as long as Smith's gang holds absolute sway. Black Rock is no place for them or children, either, because no one is safe as long as a ruthless tyrant rules the town.

American movies often romanticize small town life, but Bad Day at Black Rock picks up that rock to examine the venomous insects scurrying underneath. Four years before Macreedy's arrival, those insects swarmed out to murder the innocent Komoko just for being Japanese, even as his son fought for their collective freedom overseas. That was a bad day, too, but Black Rock is a place made for bad days, as Macreedy soon discovers. Small towns are prone to group think, susceptible to strong man predators, and often solipsistic in their worldviews, as they have trouble imagining that other places and people exist, much less matter. Macreedy says that he doesn't think there are a lot of towns like Black Rock in America, but the viewer ought to know better. Bad Day at Black Rock recreates World World II and the fight against the Nazi regime in a hot desert microcosm, warning us that cruelty, prejudice, cowardice, and apathy are not just problems "then" or "over there" but also, always, here and now. There's always another Reno Smith and plenty of Hectors and Coleys ready to enforce his will for their own gratification. There are plenty of "stay out of it" types, too, and those who disapprove but only wring their hands because they're afraid of incurring the bully's wrath. In the movie, Macreedy arrives on the train to save the town from itself, like a roving samurai, a lone gunfighter, or even a middle-aged, one-armed superhero, but that's the part of the story we can't depend on in real life. There's no guarantee that the train will ever stop, or that the hero we're waiting for will be on it if it does. If you have to pick a character to be in Bad Day at Black Rock (and you do), be Macreedy, and don't wait for him to be someone else.

Bad Day at Black Rock earned three Oscar nominations, including nods for Sturges and Tracy and a Best Screenplay nomination for Millard Kaufman, who adapted the story from Howard Breslin's 1947 short story, "Bad Time at Honda." Sturges' other films include Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Magnificent Seven (1960), and The Great Escape (1963), all of them terrific pictures. For a thematic Spencer Tracy double feature, pair Bad Day at Black Rock with Fury (1936) or Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). Robert Ryan, often cast as a heavy in noir and Western films, also plays a prejudiced killer in Crossfire (1947), but to see him as the good guy catch The Set-Up (1949). Unlike their characters in the film, Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin, and Ernest Borgnine all served in the military during WWII. For more films about the dark side of American small towns, try Kings Row (1942), Storm Warning (1950), or Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).

 

Classic Films in Focus: CAT BALLOU (1965)

Director Elliot Silverstein’s 1965 Western comedy turned out to be an important moment in movie history, and not only because Cat Ballou became a box office hit and made Jane Fonda a star. It would provide Lee Marvin with the only Oscar of his exceptional career, and it would be the final screen appearance of the legendary Nat King Cole, who died before the movie was released. Cat Ballou also paved the way for later pictures like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Blazing Saddles (1974), and even The Villain (1979) and Rustler’s Rhapsody (1985), all of which kept the Western alive by subverting its familiar tropes. Its legacy, however, is not the picture’s only attraction; Cat Ballou is first and foremost a rollicking good time, with lively performances from its stars and a loving, if irreverent, attitude toward the genre it parodies.

Jane Fonda plays the title character, who returns home after finishing her education only to find her father, Frankie Ballou (John Marley), under pressure to sell out to developers. After Frankie is murdered by the notorious gunman Tim Strawn (Lee Marvin), Cat and her band of misfits turn to crime to avenge his death. Drunken gunfighter Kid Shelleen (also Lee Marvin) dries out for a final showdown with Strawn, while Clay (Michael Callan), Jed (Dwayne Hickman), and Jackson (Tom Nardini) agree to rob trains to prove their devotion to the determined Cat.

Lee Marvin thanked the horse for his Oscar.

As the central heroine of the piece, Fonda is buxom, wide-eyed, and adorable, justifying the gang’s willingness to do anything to please her, but she has to play it straight. Other actors, Lee Marvin in particular, get the laughs. Marvin’s perpetually pickled desperado is tragically hilarious, a has-been who can’t hit a barn unless he gets a stiff drink. Even when he sobers up to face his nemesis, his transformation scene revels in the absurd, detailing the layers of artifice that make a lean, glittering killer out of an aging drunk. Like the younger men, Shelleen pines for Cat’s affection, although he eventually realizes that she’s drawn to the roguish Clay. Still, Shelleen has more personality than any of his rivals, and our attention is inevitably drawn to him every time he appears on screen. Marvin provides a textbook lesson on how to steal a picture, which helps to explain why he won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance even though Shelleen is technically a supporting role.

The rest of the supporting cast give Marvin plenty of room while making the most of their own characters. Michael Callan oozes charm, and Dwayne Hickman plays an affable clown, but Tom Nardini makes Jackson Two-Bears so attractive and sincere that you might wonder why Cat doesn’t take him more seriously as a potential mate. Also memorable are Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole as the balladeers who narrate the film’s action; although not exactly characters within the film, they are essential to its tone and its success, forming a light-hearted Greek chorus to comment on and react to the events as they unfold. Less noticeable but equally important to the movie is Yakima Canutt, the brilliant stunt coordinator and second unit director who gives the movie some of its finest action sequences. His work elevates Cat Ballou beyond mere spoof by making the stunts and chases wildly exciting even as they elicit laughs.

Be sure to appreciate Reginald Denny as the rather silly villain, Sir Harry, and Jay C. Flippen as the more sinister sheriff. Cat Ballou earned five Oscar nominations, but Lee Marvin brought home its only win. For more of Marvin’s Western roles, see Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and The Professionals (1966). Try Paint Your Wagon (1969) if you have great affection for Marvin and a high tolerance for the ridiculous. Jane Fonda went on to seven Oscar nominations and two wins, the first for Klute (1971) and the second for Coming Home (1978), but if you like her in Cat Ballou you might also like the cult sci-fi classic, Barbarella (1968). Michael Callan and Dwayne Hickman both enjoyed successful television careers, while Elliot Silverstein directed A Man Called Horse (1970) and The Car (1977).

Classic Films in Focus: THE BIG HEAT (1953)

Many noir devotees rank Fritz Lang's The Big Heat (1953) very highly, and it certainly does have a great noir look and many memorable scenes, but I find that I much prefer some of Lang's other genre outings, like The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945), to this more celebrated 1953 picture. My reluctance to embrace the movie has a great deal to do with gender; this is the opposite of a women's noir film, set in a deeply misogynistic world where matrons and molls are equally doomed. That's not to say that the movie is not worth watching, since it features great performances from Lee Marvin and Gloria Grahame, but I don't think The Big Heat is a film that I will want to revisit any time soon.

Glenn Ford stars as police sergeant Dave Bannion, whose investigation of a fellow cop's suicide uncovers a ring of corruption and crime that goes all the way to the top brass in town. His interview with a barfly (Dorothy Green) leads to the girl's murder, but Bannion refuses to be bullied out of his pursuit, even after his own wife (Jocelyn Brando) is murdered in a car bombing meant to kill him. The local crime lord, Mike Lagana (Alexander Scourby), sends his thugs after Bannion, chief among them Vince Stone (Lee Marvin), but Stone's girlfriend, Debby (Gloria Grahame), gums up the works by taking a shine to Bannion and then aiding him in his investigation after an irate Vince disfigures her with a pot of boiling coffee. The body count rises as Bannion closes in on the truth, but the detective himself edges ever closer to becoming like those he hates as his anger and need for vengeance drive him forward.

The story reflects a lot of noir conventions, with its good cops and bad cops, its depictions of women, and its bloodthirstiness, but Glenn Ford's Bannion is never very compelling as the protagonist. He's too much of a man's man, stiff upper lip and all that, and he mostly emotes stony anger that breaks out into barely suppressed rage. He is presented to us as a man who does not cross the final line that separates him from the bad guys, but we get the sense that really he crossed it a long time ago, and only circumstances hold him back now. In other words, for a good guy he's too bad, and for a bad guy he's too good, and he either needs to soften up to be a real hero or toughen up and become a proper piece of work. His wife, Katie, played by Marlon Brando's older sister, ought to provide that softening, but the film doesn't show us enough there, especially in the way of her death scene, and Bannion seems tense around her and their daughter rather than domestic.

The bad guys have fewer issues with their identities, and they end up being the stronger and more interesting characters. Lee Marvin is just despicable as the sadistic Vince Stone, and that's exactly what he is supposed to be. Gloria Grahame's Debby enjoys playing with fire by hanging around Vince and taunting him; she wants to know how far she can go before he does something about it, and she gets her answer in a pot of hot coffee flung into her face. The dead police officer's wife, played by Jeanette Nolan, is another nasty prize; Debby claims that they are "sisters under the mink," both of them rotten women who have done horrible things for all the wrong reasons. All of these roles are played to the hilt by their performers, and they work so well that they wrest our attention away from our ostensible hero.

One thing that really strikes me about The Big Heat is the number of female characters in the movie. We have Debby the bitter mob girl, Katie the sweet wife, Lucy the earnest barfly, and Bertha the conniving widow. All of them end up dead. The film presents a lot of ugly ideas about women as disposable characters. Katie dies for being married to Bannion, Lucy dies for trying to do the right thing, Debby dies because she is sexually and morally tainted, and Bertha dies because that allows the hidden information to come out and clear the air. Another young woman, merely in the wrong place at the wrong time, is attacked by Vince with a lit cigarette; it seems that he has a penchant for torturing women by burning them. Perhaps the cigarette burns and the flaming death car give another meaning to the film's title. The deaths of all of the major women characters suggest that the world has no place for any of them, rather like some of Shakespeare's tragedies, where new world orders seem to be formed entirely of the surviving males. I don't know that male film critics notice these kinds of things, but for me, the film's treatment of its women constitutes a major concern, especially because the deaths are so brutal and absolute. There's a sadism at work here beyond that of Vince Stone, one that treats all female characters as mere sacrifices to men's plots, both fictional and cinematic.

Don't start an exploration of noir with The Big Heat unless you really like your films pitch black. Glenn Ford has more interesting roles in Gilda (1946) and 3:10 to Yuma (1957). Be sure to see more of Gloria Grahame in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), In a Lonely Place (1950), and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). Lee Marvin also has memorable roles in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and The Professionals (1966), although I admit to adoring his awful singing in Paint Your Wagon (1969). Fritz Lang's earlier work includes masterpieces like Metropolis (1927) and M (1931); he also directed the interesting Gothic mystery, House by the River (1950).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.